It is remarkable that this magnificent ruin (pl. 1)
so long escaped knowledge of white settlers in the neighboring Montezuma
valley. Cliff Palace is not mentioned in early Spanish writings, and,
indeed, the first description of it was not published until about
1890.
Efforts to learn the name of the white man who
discovered Cliff Palace were not rewarded with great success. According
to Nordenskiöld it was first seen by Richard Wetherill and Charley
Mason on a "December day in 1888," but several residents of the towns of
Mancos and Cortez claim to have visited it before that time. One of the
first of these visitors was a cattle owner of Mancos, Mr. James Frink,
who told the author that he first saw Cliff Palace in 1881, and as
several stockmen were with him at that time it is probable that there
are others who visited it the same year. We may conclude that Cliff
Palace was unknown to scientific men in 1880, and the most we can
definitely say is that it was first seen by white men some time in the
decade 1880-1890.a
aIt is generally stated by stockmen and others
who claim to have seen Cliff Palace "years ago," that the walls of the
buildings were much higher in the early eighties than they are at
present.
While there is considerable literature on the
cliff-dwellings of the Mesa Verde, individual ruins have not been
exhaustively described. Much less has been published on Spruce-tree
House than on Cliff Palace, which latter ruin, being the largest, has
attracted more attention than any other in the Park. As every
cliff-house has its peculiar architectural features it is well in
describing these buildings to refer to the ruins by names. This
individuality in architecture pertains likewise to specimens, the
majority of which in museums unfortunately are labeled merely "Mancos"
or "Mesa Verde." A large number of these objects probably came from
Spruce-tree House and Cliff Palace, but it is now impossible to
determine their exact derivation.
The first extended account of Cliff Palace,
accompanied with illustrations, which is worthy of special mention, was
published by Mr. F. H. Chapin, and so far as priority of publication is
concerned he may be regarded as the first to make Cliff Palace known to
the scientific world. Almost simultaneously with his article there
appeared an account of the ruin by Doctor Birdsall, followed shortly by
the superbly illustrated memoir of Baron Gustav Nordenskiöld. All these
writers adopt the name Cliff Palace, which apparently was first given to
the ruin by Richard Wetherill, one of the claimants for its discovery.
Nordenskiöld's work contains practically all that was known about Cliff
Palace up to the beginning of the summer's field work herein
described.
Mr. Chapina thus referred to Cliff Palace in a
paper read before The Appalachian Mountain Club on February 13,
1890:
After a long ride we reached a camping-ground at the
head of a branch of the left-hand fork of Cliff Canon. Hurriedly
unpacking, we hobbled the horses that were the most likely to stray far,
and taking along our photographic kit, wended our way on foot toward
that remarkable group of ruins of which I have already spoken, and which
Richard has called "the Cliff-Palace." At about three o'clock we reached
the brink of the canon opposite the wonderful structure. Surely its
discoverer had not overstated the beauty and magnitude of this strange
ruin. There it was, occupying a great oval space under a grand cliff
wonderful to behold, appearing like an immense ruined castle with dismantled
towers. The stones in front were broken away, but behind them
rose the walls of a second story; and in the rear of these, in under the
dark cavern, stood the third tier of masonry. Still farther back in the
gloomy recess, little houses rested on upper ledges. A short distance
down the canon are cosey buildings perched in utterly inaccessible
nooks. The neighboring scenery is marvelous; the view down the cañon to
the Mancos is alone worth the journey to see. We stopped to take a few
views, and then commenced the descent into the gulf below. What would
otherwise have been a hazardous proceeding, was rendered easy by using
the steps which had been cut in the wall by the builders of the
fortress. There are fifteen of these scouped-out hollows in the rock,
which covered perhaps half of the distance down the precipice. At that
point the cliff had probably fallen away; but luckily for other purpose,
a dead tree leaned against the wall, and descending into its branches we
reached the base of the parapet, in the bed of the canon is a secondary
gulch, which required care in descending. We hung a rope or lasso over
some steep, smooth ledges, and let ourselves down by it. We left it
hanging there and used it to ascend by on our return.
Nearer approach increased our interest in the marvel.
From the south end of the ruin, which we first attained, trees hide the
northern walls, yet the view is beautiful. We remained long, and
ransacked the structure from one end to the other. According to
Richard's measurements, the space covered by the building is 425 feet
long, 80 feet high in front, and 80 feet deep in the centre. One
hundred and twenty-four rooms have been traced on the ground floor, and
a thousand people may have lived within its confines. So many walls have
fallen that it is difficult to reconstruct the building in imagination;
but the photographs show that there must have been many stories. There
are towers and circular rooms, square and rectangular enclosures; yet
all with a seeming symmetry, though in some places the walls look as if
they were put up as additions in later periods. One of the towers is
barrel-shaped; other circles are true.
The diameter of one circular room, or estufa, is
sixteen feet and six inches. There are six piers, which are well
plastered. There are five recess-holes, which appear as if constructed
for shelves. In several rooms we observed good fire places. In another
room, where the outer walls have fallen away, we found that an attempt
had been made at ornamentation: a broad band had been painted across the
wall, and above it is a peculiar decoration which shows in one of our
photographs. The lines are similar to embellishment on pottery which we
found. We observed in one place corn-cobs imbedded in the plaster in the
walls, showing that the cob is as old as that portion of the dwelling.
The cobs, as well as kernels of corn which we found, are of small size,
similar to what the Ute squaws raise now without irrigation. We found a
large stone mortar, which may have been used to grind the corn. Broken
pottery was everywhere; like specimens in the other cliff houses, it was
similar in design to that which we picked up in the valley ruins near
Wetherill's ranch, convincing us of the identity of the builders of the
two classes of ruins. We also found parts of skulls and bones, fragments
of weapons, and pieces of cloth. One nearly complete skeleton lies on a
wall waiting for some future antiquarian. The burial-place of the clan
was down under the rear of the cave.
aAppalachia, VI, 28-30, May, 1890, Boston, 1892.
Plate 4. CENTRAL PART, BEFORE REPAIRING
(photographed by F. K. Vreeland)
|
Dr. W. R. Birdsall,a who in 1891 gave an
account of the cliff-dwellings of the canyons of the Mesa Verde, which
contains considerable information regarding these buildings, thus
refers specially to Cliff Palace:
Richard Wetherill discovered an unusually large group
of buildings which he named "The Cliff Palace," in which the ground plan
showed more than one hundred compartments, covering an area over four
hundred feet in length and eighty feet in depth in the wider portion.
Usually the buildings are continuous where the configuration of the
cliffs permitted such construction.
aJour. Amer. Geog. Soc., XXIII, no. 4, 598,
New York, 1891.
Plate 5. GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUIN, BEFORE REPAIRING
(photographed by F. K. Vreeland)
|
In the following account Baron Nordenskiöld has given
us the most exhaustive description of Cliff Palace yet
published:b
In a long, but not very deep branch of Cliff Cañon, a
wild and gloomy gorge named Cliff Palace Cañon, lies the largest of the
ruins on the Mesa Verde, the Cliff Palace. Strange and indescribable is
the impression on the traveller, when, after a long and tiring ride
through the boundless, monotonous piñon forest, he suddenly halts on the
brink of the precipice, and in the opposite cliff beholds the ruins of
the Cliff Palace, framed in the massive vault of rock above and in a bed
of sunlit cedar and piñon trees below (Pl. XII). This ruin well deserves
its name, for with its round towers and high walls rising out of the
heaps of stones deep in the mysterious twilight of the cavern, and
defying in their sheltered site the ravages of time, it resembles at a
distance an enchanted castle. It is not surprising that the Cliff Palace
so long remained undiscovered. An attempt to follow Cliff Palace Cañon
upward from Cliff Cañon meets with almost insurmountable obstacles in
the shape of huge blocks of stone which have fallen from the cliffs and
formed a barrier across the narrow water course, in most parts of the
cañon the only practicable path between the steep walls of rock. Through
the piñon forest, which renders the mesa a perfect labyrinth to the
uninitiated, chance alone can guide the explorer to the exact spot from
which a view of Cliff Palace is possible.
The descent to the ruin may be made from the mesa
either on the opposite side of the canon, or on the same a few hundred
paces north or south of the cliff-dwelling. The Cliff Palace is probably
the largest ruin of its kind known in the United States. I here give a
plan of the ruin (Pl. XI) together with a photograph thereof, taken from
the south end of the cave (Pl. XII). In the plan, which represents the
ground floor, over a hundred rooms are shown. About twenty of them are
estufas. Among the rubbish and stones in front of the ruin a few more
walls, not marked in the plan, may possibly be distinguished.
Plate XIII, as I have just mentioned, is a photograph
of the Cliff Palace from the south. To the extreme left of the plate a
number of much dilapidated walls may be seen. They correspond to rooms
1-12 in the plan. To the right of these walls lies a whole block of
rooms (13-18), several stories high and built on a huge rock which
has fallen from the roof of the cave. The outermost room (14 in the
plan; to the left in Pl. XIII) is bounded on the outside by a high wall,
the outlines of which stand off sharply from the dark background of the
cave. The wall is built in a quadrant at the edge of the rock just mentioned,
which has been carefully dressed, the wall thus forming
apparently an immediate continuation of the rock. The latter is coursed
by a fissure which also extends through the wall. This crevice must
therefore have appeared subsequent to the building operation. To the
right of this curved wall (still in Pl. XIII) lie four rooms (15-18
in the plan), and in front of them two terraces (21-22) connected
by a step. One of the rooms is surrounded by walls three stories high
and reaching up to the roof of the cave. The terraces are bounded to the
north (the left in Pl. XIII) by a rather high wall, standing apart from
the remainder of the building. Not far from the rooms just mentioned,
but a little farther back, lie two cylindrical chambers (21 a,
23). The wall of 21 a is shown in Pl. XIII with a beam resting against
it. The beam had been placed there by one of the Wetherills to assist
him in climbing to an upper ledge, where low walls, resembling the
fortress at Long House (p. 28), rise almost to the roof of the cave. The
round room 23 is joined by a wall to a long series of chambers
(26-41), which are very low, though their walls extend to the rock
above them. They probably served as storerooms. These chambers front on
a "street," on the opposite side of which lie a number of
apartmentsc (42-50), among them a remarkable estufa (44)
described at greater length below. In front of 44 lies another estufa
(51), and not far from the latter a third (52).
The "street" leads to an open space. Here lie three
estufas (54, 55, 56), partly sunk in the ground. Much lower down is
situated another estufa (57) of the same type as 44. It is surrounded by
high walls.d South of the open space lie a few large rooms
(58-61). A tower (63 in the plan; the large tower to the right in
Pl. XIII) is situated still farther south, beside a steep ledge. This
ledge, north of the tower (to the left in the plate), once formed a free
terrace (62), bounded on the outside by a low wall along the margin.
South of the tower is an estufa (76) surrounded by an open space,
southeast of which are a number of rooms (80-87). In most of them,
even in the outermost ones, the walls are in an excellent state of
preservation. The wall nearest to the talus slope is 6 metres high and
built with great care and skill.e South of these rooms and
close to the cliff lies a well-preserved estufa (88), and south of the
latter four rooms are situated, two of them (90, 92) very small. The
walls of the third (91) are very high and rise to the roof of the cave.
At one corner the walls have fallen in. This room is figured in a
subsequent chapter in order to show a painting found on one of its
walls. Near the cliff lies the last estufa (93), in an excellent state
of preservation. The rooms south of this estufa are bounded on the outer
side by a high wall rising to the rock above it. An excellent defense
was thus provided against attack in this quarter.
Two of the estufas in the Cliff Palace deviate from
the normal type. This is the only instance where I have observed estufas
differing in construction from the ordinary form described in Chapter
III. The northern estufa (44 in the plan) is the better preserved of the
two. To a height of 1 meter from the floor it is square in form (3X3 m.)
with rounded corners (see figs. 35 and 36). Above it is wider and
bounded by the walls of the surrounding rooms, a ledge (b, b) of
irregular shape being thus formed a few feet from the floor. In two of
the rounded corners on a level with this ledge (a little to the right in
fig. 36) niches or hollows (d, d; breadth 48 cm., depth 45 cm.)
have been constructed, and between them, at the middle of the south-east
wall, a narrow passage (breadth 40 cm.), open at the top. At the bottom
of one side of this passage a continuation thereof was found,
corresponding probably to the tunnel in estufas of the ordinary type. At
the north corner of the room the wall is broken by three small niches
(c, c, c) quite close together, each of them occupying a space about
equal to that left by the removal of two stones from the wall. The
sandstone blocks of which the walls are built are carefully hewn, as in
the ordinary cylindrical estufas. Whether the usual hearth, in form of a
basin, and the wall beside it, had been constructed here I was unfortunately
unable to determine, more than half of the room being filled with
rubbish. I give the name of estufas to these square rooms with rounded
corners, built as described above, because they are furnished with the
passage characteristic of the round estufas in the cliff-dwellings.
Perhaps they mark the transition to the rectangular estufa of the Moki
Indians. Besides the estufas there are some other round rooms or towers
(21 a, 23, 63), which evidently belonged to the fortifications of the
village. They differ from the estufas in the absence of the
characteristic passage and also of the six niches. Furthermore, they
often contain several stories, and in every respect but the form
resemble the rectangular rooms. The long wall just mentioned, built on a
narrow ledge above the other ruins, and visible at the top of Pl. XIII
was probably another part of the village fortifications. The ledge is
situated so near the roof of the cave that the wall, though quite low,
touches the latter, and the only way of advancing behind it is to creep
on hands and knees.
A comparison between Pl. VIII and Pl. XIII shows at
once that the inhabitants of the Cliff Palace were further advanced in
architecture than their more western kinsfolk on the Mesa Verde. The
stones are carefully dressed and often laid in regular courses; the
walls are perpendicular, sometimes leaning slightly inwards at the same
angle all round the room—this being part of the design. All the
corners form almost perfect right angles, when the surroundings have
permitted the builders to observe this rule. This remark also applies to
the doorways, the sides of which are true and even. The lintel often
consists of a large stone slab, extending right across the opening. On
closer observation we find that in the Cliff Palace we may discriminate
two slightly different methods of building. The lower walls, where the
stones are only rough-hewn and laid without order, are often surmounted
by walls of carefully dressed blocks, in regular courses. This
circumstance suggests that the cave was inhabited during two different
periods. I shall have occasion below to return to this question.
The rooms of the Cliff Palace seem to have been
better provided with light and air than the cliff-dwellings in general,
small peep-holes appearing at several places in the walls. The doorways,
as in other cliff-dwellings, are either rectangular or T-shaped. Some of
the latter are of unusual size, in one instance 1.05 m. high and 0.81 m.
broad at the top. The thickness of the walls is generally about 0.3 m.,
sometimes, in the outer walls, as much as 0.6 m. As a rule they are not
painted, but in some rooms covered with a thin coat of yellow plaster.
At the south end of the ruin lies a estufa (93) which is well-preserved
(fig. 37). This estufa is entered by a doorway in the wall, one of the
few instances where I have observed this arrangement. In most cases, as
I have already mentioned, the entrance was probably constructed in the
roof. The dimensions of this estufa were as follows : diameter 3.9 m.,
distance from the floor to the bottom of the niches 1.2 m., height of
the niches 0.9 m., breadth of the same 1.3 m., depth of the same 0.5
to 1.3 m., height of the passage at its mouth 0.75 m., breadth of the
same 0.45 m. Five small quadrangular holes or niches were scattered here
and there in the lower part of the wall.
I cannot refrain from once more laying stress on the
skill to which the walls of Cliff Palace in general bear witness, and
the stability and strength which has been supplied to them by the
careful dressing of the blocks and the chinking of the interstices with
small chips of stone. A point remarked by Jackson in his description of
the ruins of Southwestern Colorado, is that the finger marks of the
mason may still be traced in the mortar, and that those marks are so
small as to suggest that the work of building was performed by women.
This conclusion seems too hasty, for within the range of my observations
the size of the finger marks varies not a little.
Like Sprucetree House and other large ruins the Cliff
Palace contains at the back of the cave extensive open spaces where tame
turkeys were probably kept. In this part of the village three small
rooms, isolated from the rest of the building, occupy a position close
to the cliff; two of them (103, 104), built of large flat slabs of
stones, lie close together, the third (105), of unhewn sandstone (fig.
38), is situated farther north. These rooms may serve as examples of the
most primitive form of architecture among the cliff people.
In the Cliff Palace, the rooms lie on different
levels, the ground occupied by them being very rough. In several places
terraces have been constructed in order to procure a level foundation,
and here as in their other architectural labours, the cliff-dwellers
have displayed considerable skill.
One very remarkable circumstance in the Cliff Palace
is that all the pieces of timber, all the large rafters, have
disappeared. The holes where they passed into the walls may still be
seen, but throughout the great block of ruins two or three large beams
are all that remain. This is the reason why none of the rooms is
completely closed. At Sprucetree House there were a number of rooms
where the placing of the door stone in position was enough to throw the
room into perfect darkness, no little aid to the execution of
photographic work. It is difficult to explain the above state of things.
I observed the same want of timber in parts of other ruins (at Long
House for example). In several of the cliff-dwellings it appears as if
the beams had purposely been removed from the walls to be applied to
some other use. Seldom, however, have all the rafters disappeared, as
in the Cliff Palace. There are no traces of the ravages of fire. Perhaps
the inhabitants were forced, during the course of siege, to
use the timber as fuel; but in that case it is difficult to understand
how a proportionate supply of provisions and water was obtained. This
is one of the numerous circumstances which are probably connected with
the extinction or migration of the former inhabitants, but from which
our still scanty information of time cliff-dwellers cannot lift the veil
of obscurity.
bIn The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde (a
translation in English from the Swedish edition, Stockholm, 1893), (pp.
59-66), unfortunately not accessible to most readers on account of
the limited edition and the cost. For this reason the description is
here reproduced in extenso. (The references to illustrations and the
footnotes in this excerpt follow Nordenskiöld.)
cThe room marked 48 in the plan is visible in
Pl. XIII. Almost in the center of the plate, but a little to the right,
two small loopholes may be seen, and to their right a doorway, all of
which belong to room 48; the walls of 49 and 50 are much lower than
those of 48. Behind 48 the high walls of 43 may he distinguished.
dThey are shown in the plate just to the left
of the fold at its middle, rather low down.
eA part of this wall may be seen to the
extreme right of Pl. XIII, and also in fig. 34 behind and to the right
of the tower.
Plate 6. CENTRAL PART, AFTER REPAIRING
(photographed by R. G. Fuller)
|
In addition to his description Nordenskiöld gives a
ground plan of Cliff Palacea (pl. XI); a magnificent double page
view of the ruin from the west (pl. XI1I); a fine picture of
Speaker-chief's House (pl. XII); a view of the Round Tower (fig. 34); a
figure and a plan of an estufa of singular construction (T); a view of
the interior of Kiva C and of a small room at the back of the main rows
of rooms. No specimens of pottery, stone implements, and kindred
antiquities from Cliff Palace are figured by Nordenskiöld. In various
places throughout his work this author refers to Cliff Palace in a
comparative way, and in his descriptions of other ruins the student will
find more or less pertaining to it.
aThe Illustrations referred to in this
paragraph are in Nordenskiöld's work.
In his book The Cliff Dwellers and Pueblos,b
Rev. Stephen D. Peet devotes one chapter (VII) to Cliff Palace and its
surroundings, compiling and quoting from Chapin, Birdsall, and
Nordenskiöld. No new data appear in this work, and the illustrations are
copied from these authors.
bAs stated in a note (Pest, p. 133) Chapter
VII is a reprint of Doctor Birdsall's article in the Journal of the
American Geographical Society, op. cit.
Dr. Edgar L Hewettc briefly refers to Cliff
Palace as follows (p. 54):
Il suffira do décrire les traits principaux
d'un seul groupement de ruines, et nous choisirons Cliff Palace, qui en
est le spécimen he plus remarquable (pl. I b). Il est
situé dans un bras de Ruin Canyon. La vue
présentée ici est prise d'un point plus
elévé, an sud, d'ou l'on contemple les ruines d'une ville
ancienne, avec des tours rondes et carrées, des maisons, des
entrepôrts pour le grain, des habitations et des lieux de culte.
Le Cliff Palace remplit une immense caverne bien défendue et
à l'abri des rave-ages des éléments. Un sentier
conduit aux ruines. Le plan (Fig. 2) représente les restes de 105
chambres an plain-pied. On ne salt combien il y en avait dans les 3
étages supérieurs, mais il est probable que Cliff-Palace
n'abritait pas moins de 500 personnes.
Nous remarquons à Cliff-Palace de grands
progrés dans l'art de la construction. Les murs sont faits de
grés gris, taillé avec des outils de pierre, dont on volt
encore les traces. Lorsqu'on se servait de pierres irrégulieres,
les crevasses étaient remplies avec des fragments ou des
éclats de gres, puis on plâtrait les murs avec du mortier
d'adobe. On prenait de grosses poutres pour les plafonds et les
planchers, et l'on peut voir que ces poutres étaient
dégrossies avec des instruments peu tranchants.
cIn Les Communautés Anciennes dans le Désert
Américain. In this work may be found a ground plan of Cliff Palace by
Morley and Kidder, the interior of kiva Q (pl. VIII, c). and a
large view of the ruin taken from the north (pl. I, b).
(Plate and figure designations from Hewett.)
Many newspaper and magazine accounts of the Mesa
Verde ruins appeared about the time Mr. Chapin's description was
published, but the majority of these are somewhat distorted and more or
less exaggerated, often too indefinite for scientific purposes.
References to them, even if here quoted, could hardly be of great value
to the reader, as in most cases it would be impossible for him to
consult files of papers in which they occur even if the search were
worth while. Much that they record is practically a compilation from
previous descriptions.
The activity in photographing Cliff Palace has done
much to make known its existence and structure. Many excellent
photographs of the ruin have been taken, among which may be mentioned
those of Chapin, Nordenskiöld, Vreeland, Nusbaum, and others. Oil
paintings, some of which are copied from photographs, others made from the
ruin itself, adorn the walls of some of our museums. Almost every
visitor to the Mesa Verde carries with him a camera, and many good
postal cards with views of the ruin are on the market. Negatives of
Cliff Palace taken before its excavation and repair will become more
valuable as time passes, because they can no longer be duplicated. From
a study of a considerable number of these photographs it seems that
very little change has taken place in the condition of the ruin between
the time the first pictures were made and the repair work was begun.
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